Tag Archives: conflict

GirlGuiding Attempt at Inclusion Raises Ire of Many

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graphic by Jayne Cravens representing volunteers

Last week, I blogged about the controversy at the Art Institute of Chicago per their dismissing their entire volunteer docent membership and their plans to replace the volunteers with paid staff, in pursuit of a more diverse corps of museum guides to interact with the public.

GirlGuiding in the United Kingdom, the UK’s version of the Girl Scouts, has also incurred the wrath of many for one of its efforts at volunteer inclusion: on October 28th, the organization sent out a tweet that ended with, a shout-out to all of our asexual volunteers and members – thank you for everything you do in Girlguiding.

More than 2000 people liked the tweet. But the tweets-of-outrage were swift and many: the complaints focused on a belief that GirlGuiding was sexualising children with such messaging. One response that was representative of most of the negative responses: Why do your guides need to know whether your volunteers have a presence or absence of sexual desire? A nonprofit in the UK, Safe Schools Alliance UK, which has worked against allowing children to use the bathroom that corresponds with the gender with which they identify and works against bans on gay conversion therapy, is pushing back hard against the GirlGuide messaging. This group promotes its agenda as part of responsible safeguarding, the term used in the UK and Ireland regarding measures to protect the health, well-being and human rights of individuals, especially children and vulnerable adults, better ensuring they live free from abuse, harm and neglect.

I offer this info on this controversy for two reasons:

  1. Creating and launching efforts in support of the diversity of volunteers your organization has, or wants, and in support of accommodation of that diversity, will always attract complaints, immediately or eventually. There may be just a few, there may be many. Some of the complaints will be sincere and from individuals not a part of any “movement” or organization, and some of the complaints will be from volunteers and paid staff of very well-organized groups. Either way, your organization needs to have thought about how to answer questions and comments like why are you doing this and why is this necessary and this puts young people in danger.
  2. People asking the question or making the comment aren’t all obtuse or rigid. Don’t assume everyone complaining is so when you craft replies. Provide a response that comes from the point of view of this person just needs more and better information in order to support this statement or decision. Will such a response convince everyone? No. But your reply is being seen by people who aren’t entirely sure how they feel about the situation. Perceived arrogance on your part can drive those people who are on the fence into the arms of people and organizations who are only too happy to provide carefully word-smithed, detailed responses to frame their point of view.

My perspective: I adore GirlGuides and Girl Scouts of the USA. I deeply admire the commitment of both to ensuring all girls feel they can be a part of their activities. This isn’t the first time they’ve done something that’s lead to controversy. But no one – NO ONE – can say the GirlGuides and Girl Scouts don’t put safeguarding at the top of their list of priorities.

I also know that change can be painful – not just for others, but also for me. Work regarding inclusion and diversity is not easy, because many societal norms are deeply held, and cherished beliefs are challenged by conversations around inclusion and diversity – and that’s uncomfortable. It’s easy for a person to feel attacked during such conversations. I’ve seen diversity and inclusion experts be angered at the idea that they need for their own web sites to meet accessibility standards so that people with disabilities and using assistive technologies can access their online information – in their talks about inclusion, they were focused on ethnic and cultural groups, not people with disabilities, and the realization is embarrassing and painful.

I assure you that, eventually, even if you consider yourself an advocate for inclusion and diversity, you will have a moment where your own deeply held principles are challenged, and you will feel anger and you will be incredulous. Maybe you will decide to hold on to those principles – I’m not here to say you should or shouldn’t. But remember that feeling the next time you are facing it from someone else.

We’re all on a journey. That includes me.

One last thing: a chastisement to all of the organizations and consultants touting themselves as volunteer engagement experts and as the leaders of conversations on volunteerism who are silent on this and other controversies in volunteer engagement. I challenged you to comment on organizations that charge big money from volunteers, to comment on organizations that say if a person that has been assigned community service will pay a fee, the organization will give them a letter saying they did the hours required by the court which assigned that community service, to weigh in regarding governments wanting to require welfare recipients to volunteer in order to receive benefits and to comment about the situation at the Chicago museum – so far, you haven’t. In addition to having upbeat conversations about how managers of volunteers can build their brand or raise their profiles in their organizations or get a hug for International Volunteer Manager’s Day, we need to be having these very difficult conversations and controversial subjects. In fact, we should be leading the conversations.

And I love how the corporate world, which always has oh-so-much to say about how nonprofits should operate, are oh-so-silent during these conversations as well.

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The opposite of poverty porn: erasing clients from storytelling

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Earlier this year, I wrote a blog about poverty porn and other kinds of exploitative marketing by many nonprofits, where graphic photos and videos of people in desperate situations or images of people with disabilities are used to make the viewer so upset or emotional as to garner donations, or to make someone delivering services on behalf of that nonprofit look exceptionally compassionate and heroic.

But on the other side of that marketing no-no are nonprofits that make their outreach stories more about what their staff is doing and about their leadership than about those that are served or the cause at hand. You want to tell compelling stories about your organization’s without trivializing people’s lives, absolutely, but you also don’t want to mostly or entirely erase those you are serving from the narrative.

Examples I’ve encountered in the just the last three months of nonprofit marketing that erases clients – or pushes them out of the focus:

  • An arts group that says it promotes the art and artistry of indigenous people, but has no photos or testimonials of these artists on its web site (just clip art of indigenous people the organization has never met), nor does it have any indigenous people on its board or in positions of leadership.
  • A homeless coalition that uses social media to feature photos and commentary about its founders, but offers no testimonials, commentary or images from those the coalition is supposed to serve.
  • Any number of nonprofits and NGOs that have far more stories and photos about the founder of the organization and what he or she is doing and thinking than they have about those being served – including photos where the founder is NOT pictured, or stories where the founder is NOT quoted.

Unlike marketing for businesses, which is pretty much about selling more and more of a product and making as much money as possible, communications for nonprofits, charities and other mission-based organizations requires addressing a variety of needs:

  • getting people to attend events or to participate in activities,
  • attracting new donors and volunteers,
  • giving current donors and volunteers a feeling of satisfaction about what they have donated,
  • allaying fears about the clients served or the cause that’s being promoted,
  • promoting behavior change (encouraging people not to litter, to recycle, to use condoms, to not use certain words, etc.),
  • addressing misunderstandings and crises,
  • and on and on.

In fact, at nonprofit organizations, the people working to attract donations may have a message that is in conflict with the people who are delivering the program – the fundraisers want to evoke an emotional reaction that attracts donors while program managers may feel that the messaging reduces those served to stereotypes. It can be a delicate balance.

So, let’s go back to those aforementioned cases and talk about what it should look like instead:

  • The staff of the organization that promotes indigenous artisans should have ongoing conversations with those artisans about how they want to be supported, how they want to participate in decision-making, how they want to be pictured and how they want their work presented online and in print.
  • The staff at an organization that helps people experiencing homeless, or people with disabilities, or people who have experienced a trauma, should have ongoing conversations with those clients about how they might want to be pictured and talked about online and in print. They should be talking with clients about the goals of the messages in brochures, on the web site, on social media, in slide show presentations: what is it the nonprofit wants to show, and how might images help?
  • Be careful about Executive Director over-exposure in messaging. If the nonprofit leader is the face of the organization and the primary reason people donate, make sure that this messaging is balanced with strong messaging about the impact the organization is having on the community or cause it serves, messaging so strong that the organization could survive the Executive Director’s departure or negative publicity regarding that person (unless, of course, your board is comfortable with the idea of the organization folding with the departure of the Executive Director and, indeed, there are boards that are absolutely fine with this setup – as am I regarding certain charities).

Of course, it’s not easy to feature all clients in marketing and public relations materials: there are charities that support foster kids, for instance, that use child and teen models rather than actual foster children in photos and videos, in order to protect the identities of clients. Something that is “exploitative” or a stereotype can be in the eye of the beholder. The best strategy: consult with your clients. Talking to them about what you want to portray, how images will be used, etc., can lead to more buy-in from those you are trying to serve for your efforts, can build more trust for program delivery, can help prevent misunderstandings down the road, and can even lead to great ideas for marketing and public relations you may never have thought of.

There are some good resources regarding ethics and photography in humanitarian work that have advice that can be applied for nonprofits working with vulnerable populations (people who are homeless, people experiencing addiction, people who have experienced domestic violence, foster children, people with disabilities, etc.) in their own countries, including:

I would love to hear from others about how they maintain this balance in their representation of vulnerable populations in public relations and marketing materials.

Also see:

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The Trust Crisis

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The world is experiencing a trust crisis. People don’t trust their national governments nor their local governments – not elected officials and not public sector employees. People don’t trust established media outlets. People are pushing back against science and historical facts being taught in schools. People will believe an unverified viral video or social media post shared by a friend or family member but not an article by a journalist or peer-reviewed academic paper by a scientist.

In addition, in the USA, there has never been a time where there have been as many opportunities to talk directly to elected officials, via council meetings, town halls, open houses, social media, email, surveys and citizens’ advisory committees, yet people are staying away from these. Officials are talking to largely empty auditoriums and rooms and getting low returns for any surveys inviting feedback about projects.

Skepticism can be a healthy thing: it can encourage people asking questions that very much need to be asked and force a project designer to improve a design before anything gets built or launched. Answering questions can make the reason to do something even stronger. But these days, people aren’t even asking questions: they are dismissing outright anything government representatives or academic institutions or news sources say. They are saying civic participation doesn’t really matter.

I grew up in rural Kentucky, in a civically-minded family: one of my great-grandmothers worked for a local county government, one of my grandfathers was a city council member and active member of and volunteer with a variety of civic groups (he even helped rally support for a school tax back in the 1950s), my other grandfather was a minister and outspoken in the community on a variety of issues, my mother was a deputy sheriff and then assistant to the head of the county government for many years, my father was the local head of a political party in Western Kentucky, and both of my parents sometimes attended and often talked about local government and school board meetings they had attended. I always knew who was running in every local election long before I could ever vote. Politics and values – but never facts – were frequently debated at family gatherings. No one was discouraged from working on a political campaign, from writing a letter to the editor of the local paper, from voting, etc. I never once heard It doesn’t matter. It won’t make a difference Why bother? from anyone. My family didn’t always like what local government agencies or public schools did, but they believed it mattered to use official channels to find out what was happening and to let their opinions be known. I also got my undergrad degree in journalism from a university that, at the time, was widely known for its journalism training, worked at a few newspapers, have worked with journalists for decades, and have idolized journalism, when it is at its best, for most of my life. I have always had a paid subscription to a newspaper, even if, now, it’s entirely online.

In the eight years I lived outside the USA, I was often working on initiatives that encouraged civic engagement in other countries, and people – particularly women – seemed hungry to take part, and encouraging their government to be more transparent via its own publications and via its interactions with the media. It was incredibly energizing to encourage the kind of civic participation I had grown up with and to see people from a variety of cultures and economic levels jumping in and doing it their own way. As a result, when I moved back to the USA in 2009, I was inspired to do my best to be a part of local government, as a citizen and resident and maybe as a government employee, if I found the right position. In the first town I lived in Oregon, I joined the local government’s bicycle and pedestrian advisory committee. In the next town I lived, I joined the local government’s public safety advisory committee, the county’s public arts coalition and the local chapter of the League of Women Voters. I also went through the county sheriff’s 12-week citizens’ academy. I attended city council meetings and political candidate forums. And I have, indeed, applied for a few government jobs.

I’ve known where to look for these kinds of opportunities to observe government, and participate in such, because of my background. And I’ve come to it with a trust in the people that staff government, public schools and media outlets, a trust that was long-cultivated. I’ve never thought of them as anything but people, with strengths and weaknesses just like anyone, just like me. But I’ve realized most people my age and younger aren’t like me: they have a built-in distrust of these institutions. They also need more than one post to a Facebook page or one tweet announcing a meeting to be motivated enough to attend. They need more than one notice in their utility bill to be inspired to do anything. They need more than whatever worked 20 years ago to get them to that meeting, that open house, that presentation. Because for every one official message from a government office or school, they have gotten probably a dozen from family and friends about how whatever it is that office is doing isn’t in the public’s best interest, isn’t trustworthy, has nefarious intentions, or just really doesn’t matter.

Governments and public schools: in your outreach planning, you not only need strategies for meeting your legally-mandated public communications requirements and for letting people know about your events and activities, you also need strategies for cultivating, even rebuilding, trust with the community. And this is something you need to hire someone to do – don’t think you can get an intern to manage your social media and make it happen.

Cultivating or rebuilding community trust takes multiple steps and ongoing efforts – not just one public meeting or open house. You have to think not only about how you will invite public comment on activities but also how you will regularly show how public comment has influenced decision-making. You have to have strategies to make yourself aware of misinformation campaigns about your efforts and strategies to address them. How will you leverage speeches, presentations and meetings with civic groups, social media posts, surveys, community meetings and more not only to share information but to also find out what trust gaps exist and to address those gaps? I research and compile recommendations for trust-building on my web site about how to folklore, rumors, urban myths and organized misinformation campaigns interfere with aid and government initiatives, and those recommendations, which come from a variety of organizations, can be adapted to help any agency craft its own strategy for addressing the trust crisis.

Here are my related resources, which aren’t just my own ideas, but ideas from a variety of resources, with an abundance of links to other articles and web sites (and I would welcome suggestions for other resources as well):

If you have benefited from this blog or other parts of my web site and would like to support the time that went into researching information, developing material, preparing articles, updating pages, etc. (I receive no funding for this work), here is how you can help. 

Governments cracking down on nonprofits & NGOs

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Budapest, Hungary is one of my very favorite cities, and not just because I think it has the BEST FOOD IN THE WORLD. Budapest has what I consider the perfect mix of gorgeous history all around and vibrant new ideas from its young people. It feels unique and ancient while also feeling bold and progressive. It’s an energy that both preserves what’s best about a community or country (history, architecture, environment, the arts, etc.) and helps it prosper and move forward, particularly in times of great economic and cultural change.

It is with great sadness that I read about efforts by the Hungarian government to shut down the Aurora community centre.  “Now, the Aurora, which rents office space to a handful of NGOs — including LGBTQ and Roma support groups — says it has been pushed to the brink of closure by far-right attacks, police raids and municipality moves to buy the building… NGOs are routinely attacked through legal measures, criminal investigations and smear campaigns — something the Aurora told CNN it has experienced first-hand.”

“We wanted to create a safe environment for civil organizations,” said Adam Schonberger, director of Marom Budapest, the Jewish youth group that founded the community center in 2014. “By doing this we became a sort of enemy of the state. We didn’t set out to be a political organisation — but this is how we’ve found ourselves.” Schonberger didn’t think authorities had targeted Aurora because of its Jewish roots. Instead, he put the harassment down to the group’s values of “social inclusion, building civil society and fighting for human rights.”

Here’s Aurora on Facebook. And here is the Aurora’s web site.

I am very partial to these kind of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) – what we call nonprofits in the USA – that help cultivate grassroots efforts, encourage the sharing and exploration of ideas, and help incubate emerging movements and other NGOs. I believe these NGOs can play an important role in helping immigrants assimilate in a country as well and help the country benefit from the talents and ideas these immigrants may bring. I’ve had the pleasure of addressing groups like this in Eastern Europe, and in the USA in Lexington, Kentucky, and I’ve walked away feeling renewed and energized. Add in promotion and celebration of the arts, like Appalshop does in Eastern Kentucky, and I’m ready to pack up and move to a remote town in Eastern, Kentucky.

This NGO’s struggles are part of an ongoing shift all over Europe, and indeed, the world, in local and national governments that are rejecting diversity, changing times, dissent and intellectualism, and governing from a place of fear. I could think that I’m isolated from this trend here in the USA, where I’m living these days, but I am not. I remember back in the 1990s, when similar political groups went after arts organizations, even going so far as trying to defund the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) and the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) – I helped arrange for Christopher Reeve, a co-founder the Creative Coalition and then performing at a theater where I was working, to debate Pat Robertson about the NEA on CNN’s Crossfire on July 16, 1990, and the theaters where I worked back in those days all felt pressure regarding their artistic choices because of these movements. Those controversies are still here, as any search on Google and Bing shows.

Nonprofits in the USA need to watch carefully what’s happening in other countries and think about how such could happen here. Remember the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN)? It was a collection of community-based nonprofits and programs all over the USA that advocated for low- and moderate-income families. They worked to address neighborhood safety, voter registration, health care, affordable housing and other social issues for low-income people. At its peak, ACORN had more than 1,200 neighborhood chapters in over 100 cities across the USA. But ACORN was targeted by conservative political activists who secretly recorded and released highly-edited videos of interactions with low-level ACORN personnel in several offices, portraying the staff as encouraging criminal behavior. Despite multiple investigations on the federal, state, and county level that found that the released tapes were selectively edited to portray ACORN as negatively as possible and that nothing in the videos warranted criminal charges, the organization was doomed: politicians pounced and the public relations fallout resulted in almost immediate loss of funding from government agencies and from private donors.

There are growing misconceptions about the role of nonprofits in the USA and this could fuel local, state and national movements against nonprofit organizations – not just arts organizations. Nonprofits of every kind need to make sure they are inviting the public and local and state government officials regularly to see their work and WHY their work matters to the entire community, not just their target client/audience. Most nonprofit organizations need to do a much better job using the Web to show accountability. In short: don’t think it can’t happen here.

Also see:

Honoring volunteers engaged in economic & social development

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graphic by Jayne Cravens representing volunteersThere are volunteers all over the world, right now, who are working to help impoverished people start small businesses and generate the income they desperately need to care for themselves and their families. They are training people in sustainable farming methods and ecological land management. They are helping build the computer literacy of a variety of people. They are training women in public speaking and in how to lead. They are training rural people in how to set up and operate groups that will identify their own most pressing community needs and communicate those needs to government and potential donors. They are helping refugees and immigrants learn local languages and participate in local civic life. They are helping to educate communities about HIV/AIDS and to not be afraid of those among them who are HIV positive. They are working to stop female genital mutilation. They are using theater as a tool to educate about something, to build awareness, even to change behavior.

Some of these volunteers live in their own homes and engage in these activities in the same communities they are from, or in nearby communities. Some travel thousands of miles away and live in a compound or a guest house or with a local family. Some face hostilities, dangerous situations, even violence, as they try to this service. Some are killed in the line of duty. Many endure sexual harassment and assault. Many suffer from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), but will not seek help because they know that, if they do, they could be jeopardizing their chances of continuing volunteer service, or they do not have access to PTSD treatment.

These volunteers don’t get statues or parades or school assemblies that honor their service. Songs aren’t written and sung in their honor. People don’t post to social media to thank them for their service. And I don’t know of any such volunteers asking for such, though they would most certainly like local and national press to pay more attention to the communities they are trying to help and causes they are trying to address.

These are volunteers who are engaged in economic and social development, and December 5th is the day to honor them: International Volunteer Day for Economic and Social Development, as declared by the United Nations General Assembly per its resolution 40/212 in 1985.

This is not a day to honor only international volunteers; the international in the title describes the day, not the volunteer. It’s a day to honor, specifically, those volunteers who contribute to economic and social development. Such volunteers deserve their own day. This includes local volunteers, not just international volunteers.

I say this every year in conversations and on social media and repeatedly on my blog: I think it’s a shame to try to turn December 5 into just another day to celebrate any volunteer, another day to give volunteers a meme with a happy kitten that says “thanks!” There are PLENTY of days and weeks to honor all volunteers and encourage more volunteering and to hug a volunteer.

Let’s keep December 5 specifically for volunteers who contribute to economic and social development, per its original intention; let’s give these unique volunteers their due, as per the original purpose of this day’s designation. Let’s honor their sacrifices, the stress they deal with, the service they give and the work they are trying to do.

Thank you to the many volunteers who help with the range of economic and social development needs in the world! Today is all about YOU and the incredible service you undertake.

Here are all the times I’ve tried to remind people of what IVD used to be about and should be again:

Also see:

What you don’t understand about UN Peacekeepers

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There is SO much misunderstanding about what the term United Nations Peacekeepers means, and what members of such a deployment can do – and cannot do. And I admit that, before 2001, I didn’t really know what it meant either.

Here are four facts about United Nations Peacekeepers that I wish everyone understood, and that I wish journalists did a much better job of explaining whenever they write about UN Peacekeeping operations:

(1) There is no standing military of UN Peacekeepers. When you hear the term UN Peacekeepers, it means men and women who are members of their respective country’s armed forces and are still entirely under the command of their own country’s military leadership. When you hear the term “a group of UN Peacekeepers”, it means a group of, say, army infantry from Nigeria, or the or India, or Belgium, or any number of other countries that may be participating. There is NO United Nations “army”. A person can’t sign up somewhere to be a UN peacekeeper – you would have to join your own country’s military or police and hope that, somehow, your country will choose to donate your unit to a peacekeeping operation.

(2) 125 countries contribute military troops, police, and civilian personnel to UN Peacekeeping operations, including 126 peacekeepers from the USA. Pakistan, India and Bangladesh are among the largest individual contributors with around 8,000 units each. African nations contributed nearly half the total, almost 44,000 units.

(3) UN peacekeeping operations are deployed on the basis of mandates from the United Nations Security Council – and that mandate must be unanimous. If one of the permanent members of the Security Council – China, Russia, the USA, France or the UK – says “no” to a deployment in a country, even if they host country wants such, then there will be no UN peacekeeping operations in that country.

(4) UN peacekeeping operations cannot happen without permission of the country where they will be deployed. That host country must invite them, approve of their being there and approve the definition of what they do. Peacekeeping missions need the consent of the host governments to operate, cannot do anything beyond what their host country has agreed they can do, and can be ordered to leave by that host country at any moment. That means that, very often, those in command of UN peacekeeping forces will refuse to undertake a life-saving action protecting foreign refugees, an ethnic minority or even local women, because such actions might upset the host country. For instance, in 2016, local and foreign aid workers were raped, beaten and robbed in South Sudan, by South Sudanese government troops, just minutes away from the main UN compound in Juba, the capital. Despite desperate phone and text messages from the victims to those in command at that compound, the 2,000 or so troops never stirred. Most articles, including this one from CNN, never identify what country those peacekeepers represent, giving the false impression that these troops are under the command of the UN. The troops that ignored the pleas from aid workers in Sudan were, in fact, from China, India, Ethiopia and Nepal. Belgian troops, acting as UN Peacekeepers, stood by Tutsi people were slaughtered in Rwanda in 1994, and a year later, Dutch troops failed to stop the massacre of 8,000 Muslim men by Serbs in Srebrenica, a supposedly UN “safe area.” It is up to those individual countries to discipline their troops stationed in these countries for not fulfilling their duties, and only IF it can be proven they did not do what they were explicitly mandated to do – all the UN can do is strongly urge them to do so.

This blog also cites statistics from the official UN Peacekeeping website, from the UN Foundation blog 7 key facts UN peacekeeping, and from this article in the Guardian.

Should the UN Peacekeeping system be changed? That’s someone else’s blog to write… I just want who the peacekeepers are and what they can and cannot do to be better clarified, by journalists in particular.

Also see:

United Nations personnel system needs radical overhaul

International aid workers having sex with people in countries in crisis

Frank description of what it’s like to work in communications in the UN

UN Agencies: Defend your “internships”

UN Volunteers, IFRC, ILO & others make HUGE misstep

My work in international development (including the United Nations)

UN mobilizes volunteers to research contribution of volunteerism in fragile communities and post-conflict environments

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The United Nations Volunteers (UNV) programme, in partnership with ActionAid, the Association of Voluntary Centres (in Russian), the Beijing Volunteer Federation, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), and Volunteer Service Overseas (VSO), is deploying 15 national and international volunteer researchers to collect evidence on the contribution of volunteerism in fragile communities and post-conflict environments.

The volunteer researchers are currently deploying to 15 countries to gather evidence for the 2018 State of the World’s Volunteerism Report (SWVR) on the theme of “Resilient Communities: The Role of Volunteerism in a Turbulent World”. The volunteer researchers will spend up to six months living with different communities in Bolivia, Burundi, China, Greece, Guatemala, Egypt, Madagascar, Malawi, Myanmar, the Netherlands, the Philippines, Russia, Sri Lanka, Sudan, and Tanzania to generate evidence and data to inform the report.

More details of this deployment and research project.

Follow @UNVolunteers on Twitter to stay up-to-date on this project and know when the report will be released.

Previous reports from UNV include the State of the World’s Volunteerism Report 2015: Transforming Governance and the State of the World’s Volunteerism Report 2011: Universal Values for Global Well-being.

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volunteer engagement to promote social cohesion, prevent extremism?

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social cohesionThere will be a conference in Brussels, Belgium on 13 October 2016 regarding the possible role of volunteer engagement in promoting inclusion and preventing extremism.

Examples from across Europe and beyond, such as from South Africa, Colombia and Algeria, will be reviewed to explore ways that volunteerism has contributed to building trust and social cohesion. The conference will also discuss elements and factors that are essential for success in such endeavors. The examples will be included in a publication that “will offer analysis of the challenges faced in Europe concerning social inclusion and the risks of extremism from different belief groups and explain how the volunteer projects contribute to addressing these issues.”

The conference is being promoted by the European Volunteer Centre (CEV), supported by the European Commission. The event will be organised in the framework of the Slovak Presidency of the Council of the European Union and with the support of London House and Team London (European Volunteering Capital 2016).

There are lots of ways for an organization that involves volunteers to be thinking about inclusiveness in its volunteer engagement, even if social cohesion or community building isn’t explicitly stated in its mission. For instance:

Also see these related resources:

Taking a stand when you are supposed to be neutral/not controversial

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handstopSo many people responsible for communications at nonprofits, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), government programs and international development agencies like the United Nations do their work from a place of fear: fear of negative publicity, fear of reprimand from supervisors or partner organizations, fear of controversy, etc. One of the consequences of this fear-based work style is that these communications professionals overly-censor themselves on social media, avoiding messages that relate directly to their program’s mission, simply because they don’t want to make anyone angry.

It’s impossible to work in communications and not make anyone angry. Impossible. While I think it is very important to be culturally-sensitive/appropriate in communications, the reality is that the work of most mission-based organizations is meant to grow understanding and change minds – and that means, at least sometimes, being challenging, even provocative. I long ago accepted that not everyone is going to like the messages of whatever program I’m representing, even messages that seem quite benign and non-controversial to me. As long as I make all messages reflective of the mission of the program, and ensure all messages come from a place of sincerity and honesty, I make no apologies.

If you want to post a message to social media that promotes something that relates to your program’s mission, but you want to keep negative responses to a minimum – or have a solid response to anyone who complains about such a message, including a board member or donor, here’s what you do: find the message you want to say on your headquarter’s Facebook or Twitter account, or a partner organization’s account, and share it or retweet it.

Here’s an example: I’ve had colleagues at the UN say, “We cannot talk about rights for gay people. It will make too many people angry.” Yet, the UN has a human rights MANDATE that includes rights for gay people. So, what could an office in such a position do in order to promote that human rights message and have a firm defense for doing so in the face of criticism? Follow the United Nations Free & Equal initiative on Twitter (@free_equal) and on Facebook. This is an initiative of the Office of the High Commissioner for United Nations Human Rights (follow that initiative on Twitter and Facebook as well). Share and retweet the messages that initiative says that you feel you cannot say yourself, such as this video from the UN Secretary General in support of the Free & Equal initiative. No one can argue that you shouldn’t share it – unless they can point to a specific, verifiable threat as a result of such a message that could endanger staff.

Another example: while working in a country with a lot of armed conflict going on, our communications office decided that celebrating the UN’s international day of peace with our own messages could be seen as taking sides in the hostilities – saying “We hope for peace” could be interpreted as encouraging one side to “give in” to another. So we decided not to post our own messages – but to share and retweet official UN messages related to international peace day.

It’s a good idea to make a list of Twitter accounts and Facebook accounts that interns and/or volunteers could monitor and whose messages they could share or retweet without pre-approval from a supervisor. You might want to also make a list of accounts they should absolutely *not* retweet or share; for instance, at one work site, I would not allow articles from a certain media outlet to be shared or retweeted via our official account, because I felt the media outlet was profoundly biased against our work and because I felt their articles were often riddled with misinformation.

No matter what: keep communications mission-based. Think about the intent of your message: To educate regarding an issue related to your program’s mission? To encourage someone to do something related to your cause? To celebrate your program’s activities or accomplishments? To create goodwill with a certain community? Always be able to justify any message you want to send.

And did you see what I just did there?

Also see:

Why you should separate your personal life and private life online

 

 

How to Handle Online Criticism / Conflict

Using social media to promote respect, tolerance, reconciliation?

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The Center for Disease Control in the USA uses a special Twitter account, @CDCSTD, to help people” to be safer and healthier by the prevention of STDs and their complications.”

The initiative @EverydaySexism uses Twitter to create awareness about the every day harassment and sexism that women experience. This organization does this both via its own tweets and using this hashtag, #everydaysexism, which they encourage others to use with their own tweets; they monitor use of this hastag and, often, retweet messages using it.

These are two examples of organizations using social media – Twitter, specifically – as a part of their program delivery. They aren’t using Twitter to point to a press release or provide updates on programs; Twitter IS the program delivery or, at least, part of it.

I’m looking for examples of organizations using Twitter, Facebook, even just simple, old-fashioned text messaging, to promote:

  • tolerance
  • respect
  • reconciliation

And to counter:

  • bigotry
  • prejudice
  • inequality
  • misperceptions and misconceptions about a particular group of people or different people

I’m not looking for just organizations that are promoting tolerance, respect or reconciliation among different groups; I’m looking for examples on Twitter or Facebook of organizations actually using social media as a way to build tolerance, respect and/or reconciliation – they are sending out messages that somehow encourage two groups that have previously been or are currently in conflict to respect each other, for instance.

I’m going to be gobsmacked if some organization somewhere in the world isn’t trying this…